Shades of feeling and judgement
Lesson opening
This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Shades of feeling and judgement: strength, colour, understatement
At this level a mistake stops being grammatical. The sentence On je prost čovek. is built flawlessly, and it does not mean “he is a simple man” but “he is a boor”. The words štedljiv and škrt describe exactly the same behaviour, yet the first praises and the second accuses. Between dobar and fenomenalan there is a whole staircase, and missing by one step is heard as clearly as ti instead of Vi. This lesson is not about what a word means but about how much judgement, force and register it carries.
One fact, three words: praise, neutral, reproach
Besides its plain meaning, a word can carry a colour: a judgement the language has fixed to it, whatever you intend. For many ideas Serbian keeps a whole set of three: a word that praises, a neutral word and a word that condemns. Swap the word and the fact stays put; what changes is your attitude, and that is what the listener hears.
The test is simple: put the word into a direct compliment. Baš si štedljiv! is praise (said without a smirk; irony comes in the lesson “Humour, irony and body language”), while the same frame with the next word in the row is already a reproach: Baš si škrt! You’re so stingy! Look at the third row: the fully neutral “self-confident” is samopouzdan, while samouveren wavers between neutral and slightly disapproving; clear reproach begins with uobražen. The verbs are split the same way: mirisati leans towards the pleasant side, zaudarati and smrdeti towards the unpleasant, and even the everyday mirisati is not quite as colourless as English “smell”.
The scale of strength: a word instead of “very”
The second tool is choosing a word of the right strength. You can add strength with “very” (veoma dobar), or take a stronger word: odličan, fenomenalan. Every major emotion has such a ladder, climbed step by step, not at random. How modest the bottom step sounds shows in school marks (the lesson “Education & media”): on a Serbian report dobar is only a 3 out of 5, vrlo dobar a 4, odličan a 5, and dovoljan, the lowest pass, a 2.
Almost every word on these scales is neutral; izvrstan (beside the neutral odličan) and ushićen sound bookish. Očajan sits in two rows: of a thing it is colloquial “dreadful, hopeless” (očajno vreme “dreadful weather”), of a person “in despair”. The colloquial verdicts super, strava “awesome” (praise, though the dictionary gives it as “horror”) and koma “a nightmare” are in the lesson “How people really talk”.
Words from odličan upwards already have “very” built in, so they are not boosted with an adverb of degree: “Veoma odličan” and “jako fenomenalan” sound like “very excellent”. As in English (nobody says “very fantastic”), they take words of truth and completeness instead, apsolutno, potpuno, prosto, naprosto, jednostavno, zaista, stvarno, or the particle baš. The adverb prosto “simply” has none of the rudeness of prost.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Shades of feeling and judgement
Colour: praise → reproach
| Set | Meaning |
|---|---|
| vitak — mršav — koščat, suvonjav | slim — thin — bony |
| štedljiv — škrt — cicija | thrifty — stingy — skinflint |
| samopouzdan, samouveren — uobražen, umišljen, ohol | self-confident — conceited, haughty |
| čuven — poznat — ozloglašen | famous — well known — notorious |
| miris — zadah — smrad, vonj | scent — bad smell — stench; mirisati / smrdeti |
| jednostavan — običan — prost, prostački | simple — ordinary — coarse |
| punačak — krupan — debeo, gojazan | chubby — big — fat, obese |
Scales
| Steps | Field |
|---|---|
| dobar → odličan, izvrstan → sjajan → fenomenalan, fantastičan, vrhunski, savršen | good |
| slab → loš → grozan, užasan → katastrofalan, očajan | bad |
| neraspoložen → tužan → potišten → utučen, skrhan, očajan | sadness |
| nezadovoljan → ljut → besan → van sebe od besa | anger |
| zadovoljan → srećan → oduševljen → presrećan, ushićen | joy |
| nelagoda → zebnja, strepnja → strah → užas, panika | fear |
Middle: solidan, pristojan, korektan, podnošljiv, u redu. Bookish: izvrstan. Očajan: of a thing “dreadful” (colloq.), of a person “in despair”. Marks: dobar 3, odličan 5.
Intensifiers and softeners
| Adverbs | Force |
|---|---|
| izuzetno, naročito, posebno | beyond “very” |
| krajnje, izvanredno, neobično, neverovatno, nečuveno | bookish, strong |
| strašno, užasno, strahovito, ludo | colloq.: strašno lepo |
| pomalo, malčice, tek malo | a bit, a tiny bit |
| donekle, delimično, u izvesnoj meri | partly, bookish |
| relativno, koliko-toliko, kako-tako | more or less, colloq. |
Judgement inside the word
- pre-: usually “too” (preskup, prevelik, premlad, prejak); “very” in a few words (prelep, predivan, presladak, predrag)
- -cat doubling: nov novcat, pun puncat, sam samcat, zdrav zdravcat
- -kast = neutral “-ish” (plavkast, žućkast, gorkast); -unjav = contemptuous (bledunjav, sladunjav)
- Nouns: kafica warm, ženetina, seljačina rude, čovečina praise
- Growth: sve + comparative (sve gora)
Understatement
- Comparative without od or nego softens: stariji gospodin elderly, punija žena plumpish, slabiji đak weakish
- Moglo je bolje. Ima prostora za napredak. Očekivao sam više.
- Dative: mrsko mi je can’t be bothered, nije mi mrsko don’t mind
Close synonyms
| Row | Difference |
|---|---|
| ljut — besan — gnevan — kivan | angry — furious — wrathful (bookish) — resentful |
| tužan — potišten — utučen — skrhan | sad — dejected — crushed — broken |
| zadovoljan — oduševljen — ushićen | pleased — delighted — elated (bookish) |
| uporan — istrajan — tvrdoglav — svojeglav | persistent, persevering — stubborn, headstrong |
| dosadan — zamoran — naporan | boring — tiring — exhausting |
Set verdicts
Bravo! Svaka čast! Kapa dole! Skidam kapu. Nema šta. To je to! Prava stvar. Za svaku pohvalu.
Ne valja. Nikakav je. Sramota! Bruka! Promašaj. Katastrofa.: condemnation.